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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 12
August 2007
Area management supporters continue push
PORTLAND, ME – Recognizing the odds were not in their favor, area management supporters used every tactic they could think of to convince the New England Fishery Management Council to include area management as part of Amendment 16 to the groundfish plan.
Maine state Sen. Dennis Damon of Hancock County left the Legislature on the busy morning of June 21 to personally read into the council record the Legislature’s joint resolution in support of area management.
The resolution requested that the Maine council delegation support and advocate for area management.
The resolution made the following points, among others:
“From 1996 to 2006 alone, Maine’s active federal groundfishing permits have declined in number from 165 to 91, a dramatic 45% decline;”
“Impacts are reflected in the continuing loss and declining numbers of shoreside support industries, including ice suppliers, fuel vendors, fish buyers and processors, fishing gear shops, bait suppliers, boat repair businesses, and transport firms … and the accompanying value each added;” and
“This loss of fish and the loss of fishing livelihoods has occurred under … days-at-sea … which has not, in the judgment of (the Legislature), achieved the overarching goal of fisheries management.”
The resolution noted that the council had asked for public proposals and received one related to area management. This proposal, the Legislature said, “offers the best promise to rebuild our once-fertile grounds, to sustain our state’s fishermen, to replenish traditional fishing stocks, to provide for the ancient livelihood of our coastal communities up and down the rugged reaches of the Gulf of Maine, and to provide abundant harvests and healthy food for the present and future citizens of our nation from the waters of New England.”
The Bar Harbor, ME town council adopted the same resolution and transmitted it to the New England council.
Biological benefits
Bob Steneck, professor of marine biology, oceanography, and marine policy at the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences, prepared an illustrated summary of the scientific principles of area management on behalf of the Area Management Coalition in advance of the June 21 council meeting. The presentation was distributed to council and audience members.
“We propose the tentative location of five management areas for New England,” wrote Steneck, who also attended the meeting in person.
“We have shown that areas are distinct and that groundfish stocks and fishing activity have area-specific patterns in distribution, abundance, and localized behavior,” he said. “Thus, the spatial scale on which the current and proposed days-at-sea approach is applied is probably inappropriate, especially for the Gulf of Maine.”
Downeast Initiative
Just prior to the pivotal May 31 groundfish committee meeting where the committee voted to focus Amendment 16 on days-at-sea management, the Downeast Initiative kicked off a major campaign to further promote area management and groundfish rebuilding. The initiative is facilitated by the Penobscot East Resource Center (PERC) and works closely with the Area Management Coalition.
“More and more people are realizing days-at-sea is simply not working for this part of the Gulf of Maine,” said fisherman, researcher, and PERC board member Ted Ames.
Further promoting the concept of area management, Aaron Dority, project director for the Downeast Initiative, said, “We believe people who have a long-term social and economic commitment to an area will be most likely to conserve and sustain the marine resource in that area. Our objective is to work with fishermen to foster this kind of community-based, locally invested fishery Downeast.”
Earthjustice
Keeping a close eye on all of this was former Conservation Law Foundation attorney Roger Fleming, who is now with the environmental organization Earthjustice.
Troubled by the groundfish committee’s decision to focus Amendment 16 on days-at-sea modifications, Fleming wrote a letter to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul on June 20, the day before the full council’s groundfish deliberation.
In it, he said that in Earthjustice’s opinion, limiting Amendment 16 to this single alternative would not meet National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements because the amendment did not consider an adequate range of management options.
“We strongly urge NMFS to carefully consider its legal obligations under NEPA and to analyze a full range of reasonable alternatives (vs.) simply modifying the existing days-at-sea program in this action,” Fleming wrote.
Snowe wants funding
During an early July congressional hearing on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) fiscal year 2008 budget, US Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) asked NOAA Administrator Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher to provide additional funding to the New England council “to explore alternative methods of managing the New England groundfishing industry in Maine and throughout the Northeast.”
“Keeping the current program in place any longer will only make a bad situation worse as fishermen will suffer additional cuts in their days-at-sea,” said Snowe in a press release.
“If there is to be a future for the New England groundfishing industry, we must develop a management plan that provides opportunity for fishermen to make a viable living,” she said. /cfn/
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